1 Field of the Invention
The invention relates to mop buckets. More particularly, the invention relates to a mop bucket which incorporates structure for stabilizing a mop in a substantially upright position.
2 State of the Art
Mops and mop buckets are well known in the art and the principal disadvantage of mop buckets is also well known. Mops generally have a relatively long handle relative to the height of a mop bucket. When a mop is placed in a mop bucket, the handle of the mop rests against the inner lip of the bucket at an angle relative to the vertical. Depending on the size of the bucket and the weight of the mop handle, the inclination of the mop handle is likely sufficient to cause the mop to fall out of the bucket and/or cause the bucket to tip over and spill its contents. For this reason, during mopping operations, one must be careful when leaving a mop in a mop bucket. Despite the fact that this aspect of mop buckets is well known and the fact that good care is almost universally taken when leaving mops in buckets, in practice, mops fall out of buckets quite often during use. In fact, in many cases, it is simple impossible for a mop bucket to support a mop in a stable position regardless of the amount of care taken when leaving the mop in the bucket.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,756,451 to Popeil discloses a mop bucket having very specific dimensions and a U-shaped handle which incorporates a rotatable hook for supporting a mop handle. While the Popeil bucket may be effective in preventing spills, it requires careful construction, is limited to buckets having specific shapes and dimensions, requires moving parts, and is somewhat inconvenient to use. In order to support the mop in the bucket, the user must be sure that the U-shaped handle is raised to a vertical position and the rotatable hook is rotated into the proper position, a procedure which requires two hands. Removal of the mop from the bucket involves substantially the same careful attention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,121,798 to Schumacher et al. discloses a "utensil handle holder" for holding the elongated handle of any of a variety of utensils in a generally vertical position. The holder includes a clip portion for grasping a handle and a pair of spaced apart flanges for attaching the holder to a container wall. While this utensil holder might be effective in stabilizing a mop in a bucket to prevent spills, it has several disadvantages. First, it must be carefully secured to the mop bucket, and in order to accomplish that, it must be properly dimensioned for a particular bucket. Second, the clip portion is designed to grasp the utensil handle with "resilient jaws". This requires that the user push the mop handle into the clip portion against the bias of the jaws. Unless the jaws are carefully matched to the mop handle, this operation could actually cause the bucket to tip over, cause the holder to disengage from the bucket, or simply fail to grasp the mop handle. Even in the best situation, it is probably advisable that two hands be used to stabilize the bucket while engaging and disengaging the mop handle from the holder.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,113 to Olsson discloses a mop handle stabilizer consisting of two parts: a first part which is attached to a mop handle and a second part which is attached to the wall of a mop bucket. The first part has a projection and the second part has a slot to receive the projection. The Olsson device has many apparent disadvantages. First, it requires careful permanent attachment to both the mop and the bucket. Second, the first part must be properly dimensioned for a particular mop handle. Third, in order to insert the first part into the second part, they must be carefully aligned. Fourth, additional devices are required for each mop used with a particular bucket. Fifth, the mounted location of the first part on the mop handle must correspond to the mounted location of the second part on the bucket. Thus, the mop may not be usable with a second bucket having another second part attached to it if the dimensions of the second bucket differ significantly from the dimensions of the first bucket.
Parent U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/706,504 solves many of the problems noted in the prior art and provides for a mop bucket which comprises an integral mop stabilizing structure for supporting the mop handle of a mop in an upright position to prevent the mop from falling out of the bucket or from tipping the bucket over.
More particularly, the parent application provides for a conventional molded polyethylene bucket having an upper lip, lower base, side walls, mop bucket handle and a supporting shelf located adjacent to the side walls. The supporting shelf is provided with a tapered notch which is preferably tapered in the direction toward the side wall and which engages the mop handle to maintain the same in a substantially upright position during handling.
According to another embodiment of the parent application, the lower base is provided with an anti-skid structure to prevent the working end of the mop from sliding along the base of the bucket under slippery or "soapy" conditions. More particularly, the anti-skid structure of the parent application comprises a plurality of raised protrusions or nipples which are generally arranged in a spaced apart fashion and which are dimensioned in the form of a quadrant of a sphere, i.e., one flat side facing the shelf and an opposite arcuate spherical wedge-like side.
While the structures taught in the above parent application provide many important advantages, the present application affords several important improvements.